Month: June 2009

021. boon time

One of the favourite parts of being a homosexual male that I’ve discovered (apart from guys) is being able to give complements to my female friends without their worrying if I’m attracted to them. I can be completely honest if I like her new haircut, or a new shirt that looks very good on her.

Granted, she has to know that I’m a homosexual first. As we’ve established, I’m not immediately obvious as such, and such comments could be taken as a come-on.

So if I complement you, don’t worry. It’s completely platonic.

020. hope

Accoridng to CNN, You-Know-Who is scheduled to sign a memorandum today granting health care and other benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees.

That’s charming considering that last week the Justice Department filed a motion in support of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Same song, different verse. He may not be sidling up like George W did with fundamentalists, but it looks like there’s not much hope for change with this adminsitration that campaigned on hope and change.

019. change?

I was reading an article this afternoon by Hank Hanegraaf titled Does Homosexuality Demonstrate that the Bible Is Antiquated and Irrelevant? on the Christian Research Institute’s website. (Yes, the name “Hank” should be red flag enough, let alone the alliteration.) Here’s an excerpt from the end of the article:

More people already have died worldwide from AIDS than the United States of America has lost in all its wars combined. This is but the tip of an insidious iceberg. The homosexual lifestyle causes a host of complications including hemorrhoids, prostate damage, and infectious fissures. Even that merely scratches the surface. Nonviral infections transmitted through homosexual activity include gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis. Viral infections involve condylomata, herpes, and hepatitis A and B.

While there are attendant moral and medical problems with sexual promiscuity in general, it would be homophobic in the extreme to obscure the scientific realities concerning homosexuality. It is a hate crime of unparalleled proportions to attempt to keep a whole segment of the population in the dark concerning such issues. Thus, far from demonstrating that the Bible is out of step with the times, its warnings regarding homosexuality demonstrate that it is as relevant today as it was in the beginning.

What I see here again is an equating of homosexual with promiscuity. There is little discussion it seems concerning those of us who consider ourselves “conservative homosexuals.” Who don’t engage in promiscuous sex any more than straight Christians and have a goal of a life-long monogamous relationship.

I wonder what would Mr. Hanegraaf have to say to that?

018. proof

Acts 20:28-31, NASB:

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert.

I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking these past few days about whether I’m doing the right thing in actually living as a Christian homosexual, if such a thing exists at all. It all rests on how much stock I really put in the Bible and that it really is the inspired Word of G-d. Because no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I actually desire to be with one man (and that’s the defining characteristic for me: I’m not looking for random hookups and nights of wild partying), this nagging voice keeps screaming that I’m really just deluding myself into thinking that this is a “valid” lifestyle.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry. (2 Timothy 4:1-5, ESV)

I was talking with my man the other day about this; that we’re talking about 26 years of thinking this way; of hearing this messages on a fairly regular basis.

So I wonder to myself—is this really what religion does to people? Twist their minds into unintelligible knots of confusion?

It would be one thing if there were someone knowledgeable in ancient texts who I could go to and could trust talking about this with. But the only people I know who have the understanding of these texts are religious conservatives. My pastor, John Piper, knows Greek and Hebrew, and believes that homosexuality is a sin. So he has a conservative bias.

Conversely, I fear that the scholars who also have an understanding of the passages in question and have reached the alternative conclusion — that homosexuality is not a sin — are also biased.

So why can’t G-d himself just give me a revelation instead of working through these biased, flawed people? Set all the confusion and hostilities to rights, and say that we’re all wrong and just need to get along.

Because I’m secretly afraid that they’re right; that I’m turning my back on Him; that I’m choosing what I want rather than what is right, relying on my feelings and the advice of others who think the same way.

I don’t want to bring any of these insecurities into a relationship, especially one that is shaping up to be as long-term as this present one appears to be. There will be insecurities and doubts and fears, and we’re talking about this right now and working through it together.

017. agh

The biggest conundrum has come up as of about 11:10pm last night. I’ve been invited to a friends’ wedding on July 31st, and I invited my southern boy to go since he’ll be here. He’s game, but says he doesn’t have anything to wear, so I suggested that he wear some of mine. I think we’re about the same size so we could easily trade clothes—a fact which could come in handy later. But that was not the conundrum.

The conundrum comes when I find out from my friends who are getting married that they have invited my parents, who have deemed to be in attendance. So therefore, being at a wedding with my parents and my boyfriend presents the uncomfortable liklihood of the four of us running into each other and my parents asking all sorts of uncomfortable questions like, “So who is this?” and “How do you know each other?” and “Where are you from?” and “So what brings you to Minnesota by way of Mississippi?” and “So when were you going to tell us that not only have you betrayed your family and your faith by choosing to be a homosexual, but you also have a boyfriend?” And so on.

On the one hand, I want them to know. I want everyone to know that I’ve found an amazing guy who wants to be with me despite my insanity; whose weirdness seems to be so compatible with my own. Most of the world seems to not care anymore that I prefer people of my own sex. It’s “my people,” the Christian Right, that come out as an angry mob complete with torches and pitchforks to lynch me. So I’m equally apprehensive about them knowing, and of him going home on August 5th a few days before my sister’s 25th birthday and being alone with all of them, and inevitably facing the onslaught of helpful if not misguided attempts to gently nudge me into going straight via an ex-gay ministry. The usual things: dropping pamphlets, slyly suggesting that I take so-and-so out on a date (“she’s such a nice girl, she’d be perfect for you”), or not-so-subtly hinting how they’d like grandchildren bearing the family surname.

I don’t think they’ll shun me entirely but after I make it clear that I’ve no intention of “going straight” there may be unforeseen consequences, such as being pressured to leave my church or face exposure since the official statement concerning homosexuality is that while they won’t lynch the first guy who traipses through their door, they don’t approve or condone it either. I may also be pressured to leave my job at the conservative Christian music academy where I teach piano. I highly doubt they’ll just let it go or tolerate me, and I’ll invariably become their “project.”

I’m probably blowing this way out of proportion, but I’ve been listening to Douglas Adams this morning so I’m feeling witty and self-deprecating at the same time. It’s a wonderful and rare feeling, not unlike being in love.

016. namaste

Here’s another excerpt from the Virginia Mollenkott interview on Speaking of Faith in 2006. She was responding to the mainstream Evangelical position of most churches and theologians to advise homosexuals to either pursue change (through prayer or other means, including ex-gay ministries such as Exodus International, Love in Action, or JONAH) or life-long celibacy. As Krista Tippett said in her preface, “For [Mollenkott], to exclude homosexuals from marriage is to deny their full humanity, and she doesn’t believe that restricting marriage to a man and a woman is true to the spirit of key New Testament symbolism about marriage, such as the often-cited image of Christ as the bridegroom and the church as the bride.”

Here’s what Virginia Mollenkott had to say.

Well, if, you know, namaste, what the Hindus say, “The holy place in me salutes the holy one in you.” When you dearly love somebody and you make love with them, you’re not just making love to another body. This is your avenue to love the maker, the Creator of us all. I think that’s the important thing about comparing marriage to Christ and the church, that it opens you up to the entire human race, not just to this one person.

It’s not just what nuclear marriage has so often been depicted, as you and me and baby makes three, and we pull everything in over the top of us and we don’t care about anybody else’s family because we’re a family and we’re number one to each other. No, it’s that loving one other opens us up to loving the entire human race, all of whom have this place in them, this divine light in them, the light which lightens every human being born into the world, according to John, chapter 1. And to me, that’s — this is transcendent, this is beautiful. And to tell somebody they cannot have access to this worshipful act is tragic.

015. pov

This past weekend I played for the wedding of a friend of mine. It was pretty conventional, albeit a tad too casual for me. The bride, my friend, looked lovely. Brides usually do. The guys, on the other hand, looked like they just sort of rolled out of bed, threw on quasi-matching polo shirts, and showed up. The bridesmaids, of course, were lovely. Women usually manage to look smashing, regardless. There are some exceptions, of course (the Jerry Springer Show comes to mind), but girls typically look so put-together. Guys today instead generally come out looking like teenage boys who still need mom to take care of them.

The straight ones anyway.

But the twist came when the pastor commented on how the groom should really be the best man at his wedding, because Christ is the only perfect husband who will love perfectly, never fail, and gave himself sacrificially for both the bride and the Bride. She should grow to love Him more every day, just as the husband too should be loving Christ more, and that bringing them closer and together in their mutual love for each other and for G-d.

Of all the weddings I’ve done, that was a first. My sister’s wedding was fairly Christ-centred, and the wedding of another friend of mine blew me away theologically and emotionally.

It made me think though. Traditional marriages are supposed to point us to the relationship between Christ and the Church, and are even to be living parables of that divine marriage. They aren’t perfect, by any means, and that’s the point. G-d doesn’t expect perfection. He expects us to be open-handed with him, acknowledging our creaturely need for him, and to admit that don’t have it all together. Even the ladies who look like they do, and especially the guys who don’t.

But marriage, especially the Biblical model, is supposed to be an example of women displaying the submissiveness to their husbands that the Church is to show to Christ (Ephesians 5:22-33). Men fail miserably here, in not being the shining examples of masculinity that a woman would want to submit to. And amidst the resurgence of goddess worship our culture encourages women to assert their feminine dominance, usually over men, taking back the power that for so many centuries was denied them by the patriarchal status quo.

However, if we look at the Biblical model, that is not what is even marginally hinted at:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. (Ephesians 5:25-29, ESV)

Guys have it much harder in marriage if they are to follow this model. They are to follow Christ’s example of living sacrificially, even if that calling leads to death. This isn’t Fiddler on the Roof, where the man claps his hands and his wife falls into line. He is to look out for her needs first.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. (Ephesians 5:22-24, ESV)

A woman then, in response to this sacrificial lifestyle that her husband is presumably displaying, acknowledges his leadership through submission. So what happens is hopefully this mutual submission, where each partner is putting the other first in the relationship and each is likewise submitting to the ultimate authority of Christ.

So.

How does that look in a homosexual relationship, where it’s two men or two women who are partnered and are equals (egalitarian versus gender-structured pairing)? Because this is not the same relationship that Paul was talking about in Ephesians; and regardless of what you may think of the Apostle (e.g., that he was a chauvinistic misogynist), he drew some marvellous paralells between earthly and divine marriage.

Men were not designed physically, psychologically or emotionally to submit in the same way to other men that a woman was designed for a man, and likewise women for other women. However, as Virginia Mollenkott said on Speaking of Faith in 2006, “Apparently the Creator likes diversity a lot more than we human beings do.” So I believe the relationship can still thrive and that it can teach us something about G-d and about faith.

So what can we learn from same-sex relationships from a Biblical or theological perspective?

The floor is open.

Shalom to you.